Tale – Iatre’s Confusion

I remember saying to myself that I wanted answers. Turns out the answers I got weren’t exactly the answers I wanted to hear. It took me a damn long time to prise those answers from the yellow guy’s mouth, but eventually he caved and started talking to me. Turns out, his name’s Arkay, and he’s pretty certain that my name isn’t Iatre, that’s just the name Death gave me.

Yeah, Death. As in, the literal thing. The actual Grim Reaper. Literally the personification of Death. Who’d have thought that Death wasn’t a dark, skeletal being with a scythe, and was instead a happy, bouncy creature with big tits. Seriously, she has huge tits. Nice, round ones. Big but still somehow realistic.

I’m getting off track. Something about Death makes me kinda… I don’t know, fancy her? It’s weird. As if I’m ever so slightly physically attracted to her.

Still, all of this means my theory that I was kidnapped by aliens and forced to fight in an arena is completely wrong. I’m actually dead.

Or “ov da deds” as my sentient cat would say. What I don’t understand is that I can remember owning a cat that could speak, but I don’t remember anything useful about who I was or where I lived. This annoyed Arkay quite a bit as he tried to help me work out what was going on. He’d ask me things and I’d go completely blank. When he told me I must have died in my sleep, I didn’t believe him. But considering how this all feels like an incredibly realistic dream, for all I know, he’s right.

Still, if I died in my sleep, at least it was peaceful. Apparently Arkay was killed by being shot in the stomach. His alien stomach ruptured, leaking acid all over his internal organs. He bled to death not long afterwards in a hospital but he doesn’t remember that bit. All he knows is that he’d been shot in the stomach before and the previous time had been far worse and he’d somehow survived. Poor guy’s trapped here with me now.

But yeah, thankfully, he seems to have some idea what’s going on. According to the yellow bastard, I’m supposed to replace him as the highest ranked of whatever we are. I think he called us Veth but I’m not quite sure. Maybe Death named us after itself. But yes, Arkay is helping me get used to my body and my new powers and stuff like that so I can replace him. Seems weird though, because the way Arkay speaks, it’s like he hasn’t been here for very long.

Not that I can tell. There’s no real sense of time here. Because time in this place is subjective rather than objective, which makes no sense. I know that normally time varies due to how fast one moves and because of general relativity and all that, but that’s not the point. Here time is as fast as Death wants it to be, and we all tag along.

But I can’t work out why exactly we’re here. Arkay seems adamant that I am set to replace him, but I feel like there’s something else going on. It is as if we are trapped here. Being kept hidden. I haven’t seen any more of these Veth apart from Arkay and the ‘Colourful Six’ as we’ve taken to calling them.

No, I still don’t know their names.

That being said, I can feel a huge amount of power lurking under my fingertips. Maybe this isn’t so much a prison cell, but a protective cell. For my own good.

I hope to be able to catch Death later. Maybe I’ll ask her properly. After all, I’ve been very patient up until now.